Bitcoin whales on the move: The number of sleeping BTC giants that woke up in 2024 has more than doubled since last year

In early June, Bitcoin surged to over $71,000 sparking widespread enthusiasm across the financial world and in crypto markets, in particular. The cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $75,750 on March 14, marking a 178% increase from the same day in 2023. These bullish jumps in price did not go unnoticed and everyone from crypto enthusiasts to institutional investors jumped on the Bitcoin bandwagon.

Driven by the cryptocurrency’s exceptional performance this year, the team at BestBrokers decided to check if the hype managed to stir the crypto world and woo the largest BTC holders, the so-called “Bitcoin whales”, into cashing in on their investments. We analysed all Bitcoin addresses holding 1,000 or more BTC, manually checking them to determine their activity status. Out of 2,088 addresses, we found that 1,035 have remained dormant since their creation, never sending any coins and only increasing in size. Оur team sifted through the wallets that “woke up” in 2023 or 2024 and counted 58 addresses that didn’t have any withdrawals for at least one year (the period we used to define a dormant BTC wallet) and made an outgoing transfer after 31 December 2022.

Interestingly, data shows that out of these 58 dormant addresses, 19 became active last year, while 39 have “woken up” since the beginning of 2024, suggesting that more BTC owners are starting to move their crypto assets in 2024.

Of the dormant Bitcoin whales with a balance of 1,000 BTC or more, the longest inactivity period we saw was 4 years and nearly 10 months. An anonymous address that had first received funds back in May 2019 just woke up after 1,755 days on April 27 of this year and moved 50 BTC, worth $3.15 million at the time. The last outgoing transaction before the address became inactive was in July 2019 when one Bitcoin went for $11,880. Once again, it was 50 BTC, but at that time, this would have brought the owner only $594,000. When the wallet “woke up” in April 2024, the price was over $63 thousand.

The second-longest dormant address to become active over the past year and a half is yet another anonymous wallet. It was inactive for more than 4 years and 4 months until this April when the address holder moved a staggering 525 BTC, equivalent to roughly $33.27 million. Presuming the owner sold those coins, their timing was perfect; on the 1st of May, the price fell from $63,839 to $60,609.

Cold Storage

Cold crypto wallets have been created to store private cryptocurrency keys, off the internet, in order to reduce the chance of a hacker’s attack that could steal digital currencies without a trace. Such wallets tend not to move their Bitcoin very often as their primary usage is for storage. While outgoing transfers are quite rare for cold Bitcoin wallets, you could sometimes see multiple incoming transactions per day; over time, coins accumulate, making these the richest Bitcoin addresses in the world.

One such cold wallet is the fourth-richest BTC wallet, which is owned by the Robinhood trading platform. This address has a balance of around 140,625 BTC or roughly 0.71% of all Bitcoins in existence. The Robinhood cold wallet was inactive for about seven months until this January when only 0.02243901 BTC was transferred from it. Another small transaction followed in February and on June 6, a massive 2,800 BTC were moved.

Typically, these huge cold wallets are owned by public companies, institutional investment trusts, and governments. The individual owners, known as “whales”, include the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, who is believed to have more than 1.1 million Bitcoin spread across thousands of addresses.

The Biggest Winners And Why Timing Is Always Key

To map out the awakening of those BTC whales further, our team ranked the addresses based on the amount of money transferred after their inactivity period. Curiously, while going through the data we noticed that March 25 2024 is the most popular date for BTC whales to emerge from their slumber. А total of 10 addresses became active on this day and most of them are addresses from a cold wallet belonging to Kraken, one of the largest crypto exchanges right now.

The largest transaction conducted by a dormant address over the past two years took place on March 30, 2023. One of the cold wallets of crypto exchange Bitfinex moved 20,000 BTC following 503 days of inactivity. Still, this continues to be one of the largest Bitcoin wallets, currently holding more than 180 thousand Bitcoins, worth nearly $10.5 billion. In fact, it is the second richest wallet and has roughly 0.9118% of all Bitcoins in circulation.

Our team noticed that making multiple transfers is quite common after an account has been dormant for a long time. Many of the BTC wallets that “woke up” after a long period of inactivity make a small initial transaction of a few dollars as a test to ensure the address is not compromised or that everything is in line. This, however, is quickly followed – if not the same day then maybe a few days later – by a more substantial transfer – this time in the hundreds and thousands of Bitcoins.

The Richest Dormant BTC Whales

Certain wallets have been inactive for many years; rather than offline cold wallets, many of these are regular “hot” Bitcoin wallets, which are connected to the Internet and, in some cases, receive BTC on a regular basis. Some have single addresses, while others include multiple addresses of different balances. The lack of activity for a long time, however, suggests that the owners might have lost the keys and are currently unable to access their assets. Other wallets are used only for storage and will probably wake up one day.

It is unclear how many addresses are currently inaccessible but these are believed to be in the thousands. The 100 largest dormant accounts of 10 years or more hold roughly 2.96% of all Bitcoins in existence. According to the database we looked at, as of August 2024, dormant wallets of 1 year or more have a combined balance of 17.48 million BTC. For reference, 19.79 million Bitcoins are already mined; it turns out that most are held in dormant wallets.

The richest dormant Bitcoin address, namely MtGox-Hack, is one of the wallets of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, which bankrupted in 2014 following a large-scale hack that saw 850,000 Bitcoins being stolen. In July 2024, the Mt. Gox started repaying some of the stolen assets under the legal rehabilitation plan. Eventually, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash worth billions of dollars will be distributed to thousands of users.

Source: https://bitinfocharts.com/

Methodology

To conduct this analysis, the team at BestBrokers scrutinised data for all Bitcoin addresses with a balance of 1,000 BTC or more from BitInfoCharts.com. We defined a dormant address as one that has not had any outgoing transactions for at least a year. We then hand-picked the addresses which broke their dormancy with a transfer in 2023 or 2024.

Furthermore, we ranked those addresses based on the time they have been inactive and the amount of the first transfer recorded after this. All rankings and charts were made based on data as of August 14, 2024. It is possible that new dormant Bitcoin addresses could have become active since then.